Featured Movies
Partners
Mask, The
Energetic adaptation of the comic-book about a bank teller who goes "From zero to hero" with the aid of a magical mask. Jim Carrey and a slew of digital special effects provide the manic antics
After a long slog, lasting several years, Canadian comedian Jim Carrey become an overnight success in 1994's Ace Ventura Pet Detective. He consolidated his star power the same year in this adaptation of the Dark Horse comic-book (a darker title than the film that verged on the horrific in its depiction of mapcap superheroics). Here he plays lowly bank clerk Stanley Ipkiss, a man good-natured to the point of invisibility. Stan's life is transformed, however, when he discovers a mysterious mask that turns him into an anarchic green-faced, shape-shifting, yellow-suited dude of a superhero. His primary aim, though, is not to fight crime; rather it's to woo Tina Carlyle (Diaz, in her first role) - a supersexy nightclub chanteuse. The comedy's based on Carrey's manic personality - director Chuck Russell says the film was transformed from its original more sinister form to suit the comedian's rubber-faced, twitchy-bodied style (Carrey even ad-libbed elements of The Mask character's mania). Digital special effects - which broke into Hollywood with such films as 1992' Terminator 2 - here are used to extraordinary effect, morphing and manipulating the already bendy Carrey into an amalgam of live action and cartoon (reminiscent of the heights of Chuck Jones' and Tex Avery's stylised violence). It's the special effects rather than a deep and incisive script that define the film, but The Mask is highly enjoyable - if you can bear Carrey's constant tics and mugging. Punters certainly relished it - the $18 million production garnered over $300 million worldwide. |
